


stalk him until you get through

by Roussu



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Government Mass Surveillance, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 06:44:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15576054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roussu/pseuds/Roussu
Summary: Dan is an MI5 agent monitoring Phil.





	stalk him until you get through

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this back in February when the FBI agent meme was still relevant.
> 
> Thanks to [autumnhearth](http://autumn-in-phandom.tumblr.com) for beta-reading and [thephandommenace](http://twitter.com/dankmenace) for sucking out the un-Britishness (*monocle emoji*)!
> 
> prompted by and dedicated to my friend Rose

_“I’d know you in the dark,” he said. “From a thousand miles away. There’s nothing you could become that I haven’t already fallen in love with.”_ – Rainbow Rowell, _Attachments_

 

* * *

 

When Dan had set out to study Law, he hadn’t imagined ending up working for the government in a job that was morally dubious to say the least, while still technically being legal. After graduation he had suffered through an underpaid law firm training without any real job prospects in sight, until he’d decided to try applying for the government’s graduate schemes. He’d thought that if the law firm he’d basically sold his soul to for almost two years wasn’t going to give him a proper job, he’d gladly settle for sitting in a dusty government institution checking the legality of their documents for a few years before trying to advance to a more exciting position.

What Dan hadn’t expected was that after he’d gone through the exhausting, several months’ long application and interview process, he’d been offered a training position in the Security Service’s counter-terrorism department. He was now two years into working for them and had just a few months earlier been promoted from an intern to an actual employee. His grand new title was Assistant Junior Intelligence Collector, but most days he had a hard time believing that this technically made him an actual MI5 agent because he still had to use half of his working hours for unjamming the printer and making tea for more senior employees.

Dan’s main task was to monitor the data traffic of a midsized Internet service provider in the London area. Most of the work was at least semi-automatic, as he used special computer software for running analyses of the collected data and alerting him of potentially suspicious behaviour. Whenever an alert came in, he had to manually check if there was any reason for concern, write a report and enter it into a database which people higher up in the hierarchy used for purposes Dan wasn’t privy to. Usually his hands were full with sorting out and reporting false alarms, which he found himself unexpectedly happy about. The one time he’d uncovered something actually suspicious and had to alert his boss, had turned into the most nerve-wracking day of his life, which he wasn’t keen on reliving.

 

* * *

 

After yet another ordinary work day was nearly over, Dan was typing in an IP address that he knew by heart at this point, after several weeks of regularly checking in on the guy using the address. Dan saw that the guy’s laptop was connected to the internet and with a couple of swift clicks on the screen, Dan had access to the laptop’s web camera. No one was sitting by the computer when Dan tapped into it, but there was someone dancing in the vicinity of the camera, wrapped in what seemed to be a total of three towels. That was undoubtedly weird, but Weird Man was what Dan called the guy on the screen in his head. He knew he could easily get to know the man’s name, but looking up his name felt somehow more like crossing a line than nonconsensually watching him through a webcam.

Dan had come across Weird Man a few weeks earlier when the computer had alerted him about suspicious activity linked to the man’s IP address. After an investigation, Dan had concluded that the guy seemed harmless, but had some eccentric interests like machine intelligence conspiracy theories and certain types of furry porn. In the following days, he found himself coming back to Weird Man time after time even though he knew it was a serious breach on the man’s privacy.

Most days Dan saw him do completely ordinary things, like browse the internet, cuddle his dog or cook, albeit clumsily, but sometimes he would do more fascinating things, like dance towel-clad, badly sing old 90s hits or straighten his black hair in a way that reminded Dan of his own hairstyle from not too long ago. In those moments, Dan simply couldn’t look away.

Weird Man wasn’t conventionally attractive: he had an alien-shaped head, a crooked nose and bad posture, but to Dan those traits were just endearing and added to his growing infatuation. One unfortunate time when Dan tapped into his webcam, the man was in the middle of undressing himself, which made Dan quickly close the connection in shame. The mortification of having caught Weird Man in such a position was enough for Dan to keep away for exactly three days, but the simultaneous exhilaration of it made him come back because he secretly wanted another forbidden glimpse of the guy’s pale skin.

Weeks went by, and the time Dan had secretly been following Weird Man’s domestic activities every afternoon turned into months. Dan knew he needed to stop eventually, preferably as soon as possible, because what he was doing was undoubtedly wrong, but how could he let go when it would mean that he’d never again get to see the man he was now constantly daydreaming about? He was even considering turning himself in to his boss to get himself to stop, but that would probably mean the permanent end of his career and potentially even a prison sentence. They did a lot of dodgy stuff in MI5, but Dan doubted his boss would leave a rule break of this magnitude without repercussions.

He couldn’t let a crush on someone he didn’t even actually know ruin his life, so he decided to try distracting himself with taking on more tasks at work so that he wouldn’t have time to think about Weird Man. It took him a lot of mental effort and bribing himself with pizza, but eventually he managed to stop the inappropriate spying. When the day Dan decided to only take one last peek on the man came, he ironically didn’t even get to see the guy himself. Instead, he was greeted by the sight of just the guy’s corgi, which was curled up in the office chair in front of the computer.

 

* * *

 

Christmas was approaching, and Dan hadn’t checked in on Weird Man in months. He wasn’t exactly over his infatuation on the man, but he was managing fine. At least that’s what he told himself, but according to his friends, he’d been moodier than ever lately. In an attempt to cheer himself up, Dan had actually decided to follow his mum’s suggestion and treat himself to something sweet on his way back from seeing his family.

Dan ordered a Gingerbread Latte to take away in the Starbucks at the Paddington Station. After receiving the drink, he started turning around with the intention of drinking the coffee while walking home. However, turning around made him crash into someone he hadn’t seen walking behind him, and the impact caused the lid of his cup to open and hot coffee to spill all over the front of his coat.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t look where I was going!” said a voice far too familiar to Dan. Indeed, when Dan lifted his gaze from assessing the damage on his coat, he was met with Weird Man’s startled face. The webcam had done no justice to how beautiful his eyes were in real life.

Dan was too shocked to say anything or even breathe, so he just stared at Weird Man open-mouthed.

“Let me get something to dry your coat with”, Weird Man said quickly when he realised Dan wasn’t going to reply and went to get napkins from the cashier’s desk. Then he came back and started dabbing at Dan’s coat, all the while Dan was standing frozen, tightly holding his now half-empty cup.

“I really am sorry”, repeated Weird Man, “you have to let me buy you a new coffee!”

“Okay”, Dan finally managed to exhale.

“You had a Gingerbread Latte, right? At least that’s what your drink smells like. I was going to get the same one, and it’s no bother for me to order two of them. After all, it’s my fault you now have nothing to drink and a soaked coat”, Weird Man rambled on while Dan was still recovering from the shock of literally bumping into him.

“It’s alright”, Dan said hesitantly, not daring to believe where this was clearly heading. “I didn’t look where I was going either.”

“I hope you’re not in a hurry because it looks like we might need to wait for a while to get the drinks”, Weird Man said and offered Dan his hand to shake. “I’m Phil, by the way.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi to me or reblog this story on[ Tumblr](https://dnpbream.tumblr.com/post/176661995882/stalk-him-until-you-get-through)!


End file.
